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Strategies & Market Trends : Befriend the Trend Trading -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dougbishop who wrote (16172)	2/21/2001 11:11:05 PM
From: Dr. Stoxx	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39683

db, Still, I stand by my argument that trading is neutral toward increasing society's value...neither a help nor a hindrance...and that what is possibly gained by an increase in liquidity is more than lost by an increase in volatility... I don't see how what I do can be understood as bringing together buyers and sellers (there are lots of investors and money managers to do that)...I'm just simply exchanging shares for a few hours/days with fellow traders...that's about all...nothing romantic about it... Failed software engineers, like the many failed theorists of various stripes I met at Oxford (slaving away long years on some magnum opus that would never be published) still contribute something positive to society: namely in educational capital and by setting a moral example for others to follow (industriousness without reward, e.g.)... But trading for a living...assuming one is successful...imparts no more positive value, IMO, than inheriting money, or winning the lottery...i.e. it helps to pay the bills and feed the family and keep one's own off the welfare rolls...but the act itself produces nothing of any real value (nor does it necessarily detract value, unless the volatility I mentioned can be shown to be detrimental to the financial health of investors/nontraders)... But if trading pads one's income to the extent that one feels more comfortable donating to charity, or if it allows one to send one's children to private schools, or spring for that string quartet at one's daughter's wedding, or take one's wife on an second honeymoon...etc....and at the least one is paying more taxes (!)...then there may be some positive contribution to be made to society by traders... TC